The concept of a computerized or simulated dressing environment is a user-operated display system that generates computer-simulated images of a human figure wearing one or more selected garments. The simulated human figure thus represents a virtual model or mannequin for modeling clothes. Such an environment should ideally provide the user with the capability of viewing the mannequin and garment from a plurality of viewpoints to give a three-dimensional experience. By allowing the user to also select in some manner the particular human figure that is to wear the garment, an individualized experience is provided that allows the user to see what selected clothes look like when worn by different people.
The degree to which the system takes into account the physical forces acting on a garment as it is worn determine in large part how visually realistic the computer-generated images are. Simulation of the draping and collision of a garment object with a mannequin using a three-dimensional modeling environment (e.g., Maya, manufactured by Alias Wavefront of Toronto, Canada) allows the rendering of a two-dimensional image of the mannequin and garment that is quite realistic in appearance. It is desirable in a simulated dressing environment, however, for a user to be able to select among a variety of different mannequins and/or garments for displaying. Accordingly, a simulated dressing environment could be implemented with a three-dimensional modeling environment simply by simulating particular dressing scenes in response to user inputs and then rendering two-dimensional images directly from the simulation scene. The massive amount of computation required to perform a collision and draping simulation for any particular mannequin and garment, however, makes three-dimensional modeling an impractical way by itself in most commonly available computing environments to generate the multiple images of different mannequins and garments needed to implement a dressing environment.